2004 Audi A6 Quattro review from Australia and New Zealand

Nothing.

Why wife and I were in the market for a new car and had more or less decided on the Benz E270 CDI when I read an advertisement for the Audi A6. We decided to test drive and were hooked.

We've had the car now for three weeks so these are substantially first impressions.

Our's is a 3 litre twin turbo diesel Quattro and the first thing you notice on starting the car is that it doesn't sound like one. There is none of the traditional clatter at low revolutions. The acceleration is very good and very smooth and like most diesels it just loves to climb hills. On a recent freeway trip we averaged 7L/100Km and the average of suburban and country driving in the three weeks (2,000 Km) we've had the car is 10.5L/100Km (That's 33.6 and 22.4 m.p.g. for our US friends).

Haven't been close to top speed (and probably won't because of the draconian speeding laws in this country) but I can say that at 200 Kph it feels very safe and stable.

There is a lot to learn about the car, like the fact that it will not release the park brake until the seat belt is done up. My wife was also concerned that the boot (trunk) wasn't locking properly. However she hadn't realised that the boot handle has the same unlocking mechanism as the other doors and because we have keyless access the car was unlocking itself when it sensed her try the handle while the key was in her handbag.

A great feature of this car is the gigantic boot (trunk) and the ability of the rear seats to fold flat. The resulting space is enormous.

We use the car a lot on narrow twisting country roads and it works fabulously as if it was on rails. The quattro system also helps with occasional gravel roads. When I first bought the car I wanted to see how effective the system was, so when making a turn over wet tram tracks I gave the throttle a lot more than I normally would, expecting the stability control system to activate or at least get some serious oversteer. I got nothing of the sort. Wet tram tracks are notorious for traction loss and the A6 just turned as if they weren't there.

This car also has more gadgets than I have been used to. The voice control system (initiated from a single button on the steering wheel) will let you specify a town, street and house number without touching another button and it's a lot faster and easier then with the car's multi media interface (MMI) system. You just spell the address out loud. I never thought I'd want a TV in the car, but it has some unexpected advantages. Usually getting stuck in heavy traffic is a pain but not when there's a good game on. You find you actually look forward to the next red light and feel so much more relaxed. The video isn't available when moving of course.